A moving feast

Joy Clough3 Comments

As a woman who prides herself on upholding nontraditional traditions, nothing is more sacred than my holiday feast. No common turkey for me. Christmas goose? No thank you—still too middle of the road. Years ago, I dumped my old standby of beef loin in favor of a bolder, more exotic cut of roast beast(s). Come rain or snow or dark mountain-top delivery, I now must eat Turducken.

Tur(key) + duck + (chick)en = Turducken. It’s a de-boned chicken stuffed into a de-boned duck, which is then stuffed into a de-boned turkey. The turkey drumsticks, breast and outer skin remain, making it look like your iconic holiday main course. But inside it’s a savory mystery of light and dark meats that Grandma never carried to the table unless she came from down on the bayou.  I discovered Turducken on the Food Network, back when cooking/reality shows weren’t a dime a dozen and actually offered some instructional value. I remember the demo having all the boast and swagger of Emeril Live, the intrigue of Man vs. Wild, and the potential pitfalls of a DIY episode gone bad. I took one look at the succulent end-product the chef presented to the camera and knew I wanted to devour some Turducken. I took a longer look at the chef’s three-hour carving and stuffing procedure and knew I wanted it prepared in anyone’s kitchen but my own.

That’s when I found the Cajun Grocer, voted best Turducken source by The Wall Street Journal. Their website got my mouth watering and convinced me that shipping a 15-pound frozen turkey trifecta was a breeze. As long as I observed their holiday delivery schedule from Lafayette, Louisiana, I could savor their signature creation anywhere in the world. I got so fired up, I even went for their spicy seafood Jambalaya stuffing.

The first couple of Turducken Christmases boosted my confidence. Leery that first year that the thing would arrive on Dec. 21 and be rotten come Christmas morning, I since learned that its hermetically sealed, dry ice-packed shipping box kept it frozen till way after oven time if I didn’t unearth it immediately upon delivery. Thawing it took nearly an ice age! I also figured out that: 1) relying on the little pop-up thermometer for Turducken doneness is not a perfect science; 2) despite how it sounds, Jambalaya stuffing juices make for some awesome gravy; and 3) once I served the concentric circles of sliced meat with all their Cajun fixings, my family would come to expect and highly anticipate a repeat performance every year.

Naturally, I planned for Turducken to be the central attraction at my first Christmas dinner in Rangeley. I placed my order on Dec. 9, and went about the rest of my holiday business, calm in knowing I had already checked off my top-of-the-list item. “Been there, done that,” I said to myself, picturing the square styrofoam container showing up on my porch via UPS just in time for my thawing ritual. It wasn’t till mid-December, after plowing through the rest of my online ordering and a couple of snow dumps, that the reality of my new situation dawned on me. The Cajun Grocer’s holiday schedule showed plenty of time for a regular, good old ground shipment to arrive on the 23rd. But the website’s fine print didn’t say anything about shipping to a private road—across a causeway from a long, dirt town road—that eventually led to a post office and a general store. Ground shipments that couldn’t land in my PO box in Oquossoc (or behind my box in the post mistress’ crowded quarters) had to cover a whole lot more ground now that I no longer lived in the flatlands of New Hampshire. Each UPS or FedEx package destined for my side of the lake required tons of lead time, at least two phone calls, a tracking number that was useless beyond Waterville, a neighborhood vigil, and a backup plan in case the thing never showed up.

After consulting the Cajun Grocer website again and cursing myself for picking the Dec. 20 ship option two weeks earlier, I nervously dialed 1-888-CRAWFISH to get help from the Turducken tech support folks. “I really need this to arrive by the 23rd,” I explained, “and I live in a rural area. If I switch to FedEx second-day air, can delivery be guaranteed by then?”

“Certainly, ma’am,” the customer service woman told me in a sweet drawl. My phone number would be printed on the address label so the driver could call if he had any problems reaching my location. Even though I knew she was picturing southern “rural” delivery and not necessarily my snowy landscape, I paid the $17 shipping upgrade and felt relieved.

By the week before Christmas, I had told my story to the woman at the Rangeley  dispatch, central winter dumping ground for most wayward packages. Tom had even gone there to retrieve a couple boxes that, although they got my hopes up, were not my Turducken. He had also been summoned down to the town side of the causeway bridge to pick up another different package off the FedEx truck. With my feast in limbo as I waited for my phone call with drop-off instructions, I understood why the natives resorted to dried venison this time of year. According to the FedEx tracking site, I had poultry in motion on Dec. 20, as promised. But, after that, my special delivery, had become a Tur-TRUCK-en.

The first phone call came on Dec. 22. It was FedEx headquarters in Augusta informing me they would not be able to deliver until the following day. “That’s fine.” I sighed, “Just have the driver call me if for any reason he can’t make it all the way up my road.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, ma’am, the driver does not carry a phone,” I was told. No phone? Really? Along moose alley in winter carrying dozens of packages with sketchy addresses? “But my husband just got called by the driver yesterday to go meet him….” Well, turns out, that was the Waterville FedEx guy. My box was on the Augusta truck and the Augusta guy doesn’t use a phone.

The second FedEx phone call came on the afternoon before Christmas Eve. My package was on the truck, but the driver would, unfortunately, not make it to my location that day. Could he drop it off at…(insert an agonizing pause and any number of possible suggestions between here and Augusta)…..the Oquossoc Grocery? “Yes!” I yelled into the phone. My heart soared as I called Tom and Becky, enroute home from skiing at Saddleback, and left a message. “Pick up the Turducken on your way through,” I pleaded. “And if, for any reason, it doesn’t show up, please grab a ham!”

As far as Christmas miracles go, the timely arrival of my Turducken was a small thing in a year filled with blessings. It didn’t require guidance from a heavenly star, just a note to self to back plan better next year. The greatest gift was the family around my table for my first Christmas in Rangeley. We gathered from afar—from over the causeway and through the woods—to eat, drink homemade wine, and top off our feast with pie Tom dreamt about as he picked blueberries back in August. And, of course, we laughed as I told tales of the traveling Tur-TRUCK-en, the latest piece in our rich, but slightly off-center, folklore.

Yankee swappin’

Joy Clough2 Comments

Yankee: (adjective) of, pertaining to, or characteristic of a northern native. Swap: (noun) an exchange or barter, typically involving bargaining. Used in a sentence: “Everyone had a wicked fun time at the Yankee swap over in Oquossoc the other night.”

For years, I was a relative newbie to the Yankee swap tradition. All I knew was it happened at Christmas parties and, even if I got invited but didn’t participate, it was OK to eat the food beforehand. I’d sit on the sidelines munching cookies while the game players picked and traded presents based on their previously allotted number hierarchy, their tolerance for risk, and their ability to abandon themselves in holiday frivolity.

Until recently, my Yankee swap exposure was limited to office party settings. I figured my coworkers were maximizing their company-sanctioned away from their desks time. We were too old for musical chairs and besides, with so many layoffs looming, playing that would have reminded us we were all in line to possibly lose our chairs permanently—a definite party downer. So we ate goodies and watched each other and our bosses enjoying an excuse to get goofy. If it was an especially good year, the top swapper might come away with a bottle of booze yanked away from a manager who, ultimately, had to be content with battery-operated nose hair clippers.

Karma came around for me one year when I finally decided to bring a gift (a nice bottle of homemade wine) and participate. I had the coveted bottle of Kahlua in front of me for all of about two minutes when my boss swooped in and left me with a giant tin of singing Christmas cookies! While giant tins of anything are regular Yankee swap fare, this one seemed destined especially for me. The minute I touched the lid, it blared Christmas carols so loud that everyone within an office cubicle square mile knew I was sneaking a cookie break. I left it in my bottom filing cabinet drawer when I got laid off that July, hoping whoever sat in my chair next would like cookies, too.

Fast forward to last week. When I got invited to the Rangeley Region Guides and Sportsmen’s Association annual Yankee swap, I knew my bah humbug days were over and a new favorite tradition was in the making. The oldest and one of the largest sporting groups in Maine, these folks have been making Oquossoc the epicenter of all things outdoors since 1895. After joining this summer, it only took one meeting before Tom and I made it the highlight of our social calendar, too. An RRG & SA meeting, you see, is actually 90% enjoying good food and fellowship with nearly everyone in town, and 10% business. No Robert’s Rules of Order, boring agendas, or anything like that. Meetings convene with Bob, Harry, Karen and Marge and most of their neighbors sharing casseroles and telling stories. No matter what the season, everyone piles into the clubhouse smiling, and leaves filled with great food, good cheer and ideas on where the trout are holing up. Come Christmas, when no wildlife guest speaker is invited and after dinner business turns to Yankee swapping, it’s the most outdoor fun you can have indoors.

This year, about 30 good ole sports went fishing for the best gift to open and then hunting for the trophy swap. Up for grabs were two hats (one functional), six flashlights, work gloves, ice cleats, two suet holders, and the best wine to be found for under $5. A battery-operated bug zapper paddle/racket got bartered around the most, while a giant blue vase, a poinsettia pie plate, a jar of homemade maple syrup, and the one functional hat were also heavily traded.

Being not very high in the gift-picking number hierarchy, I ended up opening a “what the heck am I going to do with this” thing with no other better options in circulation yet.  Based on critiques from the gallery and my own limited experience, I now know how to score what you’re left with at the end of a Yankee swap. Basically, your gift falls into these categories:  1) you can actually wear it, eat it or otherwise use it; 2) you can recycle it for some better use; or 3) at least you can rewrap it and won’t have to buy anything next year. Best previous swap I went home with was actually a combo of categories 1 and 2. After eating the contents of the giant tin of popcorn, it made a perfect dog food storage container. This year, however, my gift definitely ranked a 3. If I don’t get it out of the back of the Subaru by March, it’s going to be regifted to the recycling house at Rangeley Plantation dump.

But, like all Christmas festivities, my first Rangeley Yankee swap was all about the celebration and not really about the trinkets. Sitting among new friends in the clubhouse, I thought about all I had swapped to get there at this point in my life: A bigger home on a shorter road to a busier town—for my quiet corner on a big lake. Fewer restaurant dinners for five-star potluck once a month. Closer proximity of conventional writing opportunities for creative flow and the time to unleash it. My gym bag and endless loops on the elliptical machine for more time in winter boots off the beaten track. Best Yankee swap ever, for sure.

Welcome DecemBear!

Joy Clough4 Comments

Anyone eavesdropping lately would swear I’d already gone woods queer. “So, it’s December 3rd! Do you know where you’re going today, little fella?”

I’m in the diningroom in my PJs, paused at the cellar door on my way to the coffee pot. I’m not talking to Tom because, even though I sometimes use pet names while reminding him of his full social calendar, he’s not my little fella. I’m not addressing the beagles, either. They are, collectively, “big boy” or “littlest guy,” and can only mark the passage of time with their innards. I’m alone, it would appear, carrying on another in-depth conversation with myself—a dialogue I mastered way before moving to the woods. “Today, you need to look outside in the mailbox,” I declare, and shuffle off to get caffeinated.

“She needs a lot more than coffee,” the neighbors would say, “if she woke up thinking somehow we got door-to-door mail delivery in Rangeley Plantation!” But if they looked real close, they’d realize I’m not alone. I’m with DecemBear, a three-inch stuffed teddy who lives with me this time of year. His mission is to search around his house for “the true meaning of Christmas”—checking his mailbox, beside his snowman, and inside each and every room—until at last he discovers it on Christmas Eve next to the tree with the rest of his little bear family. His search starts each December 1st, when he must hang out in each day’s spot until the 24th. It is my mission to see that he’s successful every year, a responsibility I’ve carried on for more than 20 years, through two houses and sending my “little girl” helpers off to college and beyond. I’m not sure what would befall me if somewhere along the way I shirked this duty. What if one year I just left DecemBear rolled up in his red flannel wall calendar in a box in the closet? What if, for a day or two, I lapsed into complacency and didn’t properly position his safety-pin spine? I hate to imagine.

Since moving to Rangeley, I am learning to flow with the seasons, to live by nature’s timetable. Like the first inhabitants of this land, I strive to tune into my internal rhythms instead of relying on clocks or calendars. But, as I said back in Happy Half Anniversary, I do tend to be hyper vigilant about special occasions, and observing my first Rangeley Christmas makes this year ever so special. I also have some quirky control mechanisms that seem to be triggered by the shortening of daylight, making me seek comfort in childlike routines and all things bright and sparkly. All in all, this month finds me pretty far removed from the traditions of the wiser, real Maine natives. They watched moon phases and traded ceremonial wampum. I track a cloth cartoon character hanging off my cellar door. 

Who knows, maybe I missed putting a dime in an advent calendar during my formative years and I got fixated. Then, one fateful Christmas when my girls were little, my mother-in-law made DecemBear from a fabric store kit and my quirkiness found an outlet. At first, I commandeered his travels because the girls were too short to reach the top of his house where it hung on the kitchen wall. Not to mention that a tiny teddy with an open safety-pin sticking out of his back would not have won any “best toddler gift” awards. The girls grew up, went off to college, and I still maintained the ritual. Part of me must have felt that, as long as the little bear made it safely around his calendar house, that meant my “little ones” would always return home, safe and sound, each Christmas, too. As the years went by, putting him up in the attic with the tree decorations became too threatening for me, so I began parking him right in the hall closet behind the coats. Like clockwork, come December 1, I’d take down Helen’s picture from when she won a scholarship and was featured in the newspaper and toss it under her bed so DecemBear could take his place front and center in the kitchen.

More times than I care to admit, I made emergency phone calls from my office back home when she was visiting this time of year. “Hi honey, did you sleep in today? You must be still recovering from studying for finals. Gee…you sound like you’re getting a bad cold. Cough medicine? Yes, that’s in the bathroom cabinet. You should take some right away. And, oh, before you do, could you do me a huge favor and move DecemBear for me? I forgot this morning!”

As you can imagine, finding my little seasonal friend in all the moving boxes was top priority recently. The day after Thanksgiving, I started getting nervous and wasn’t quite myself till I found him, rolled up in his calendar cocoon underneath the stockings and tree ornaments. Phew…all was right with my world! DecemBear had survived storage in the garage and was in the house again!

I know this is not normal behavior. Right now, I’m in denial, immersing myself in a holiday routine that disguises my core issues. I have a real problem, my own form of wintertime “affective disorder.” I suffer from Seasonal Attention to a Decoration (SAD) and I intend to help myself get better…right after the New Year when DecemBear goes back into hibernation.

Creatures stirring

Joy Clough1 Comment

So, if there was a creature stirring all through the house, how would you know?

Living in the Maine woods on cold, pre-winter’s nights gives me ample opportunity to ponder that age-old question. The challenging part comes in never knowing the precise moment I’ll go from idle speculation to launching an in-depth investigation.

Flump…flump…flump…kaffitt….ffitt…ffitt…kaflump!

“What IS that and where in the hell is it coming from?” It’s midnight and I’m interrogating Tom about the frantic stirring in our bedroom wall. Moments earlier, I’d laid my weary head on my pillow, grateful for my quiet serenity, my flannel sheets and my double layer of fleece blankets. As I snuggled in, I thought about the nighttime sounds we’d left behind in favor of our new blissful stillness. We weren’t victims of big city noise pollution by any stretch, but the incessant thumping of road traffic slamming through the potholes in front of our old house made our current address a more restful retreat.

Flump…flump…flump…kaffitt….ffitt…ffitt…kaflump!

“That’s really loud and it’s right next to your head!” I declared to my husband and official noise patrol officer who, by now, was bolt upright in bed, blinking furiously into the darkness. Moments earlier, he’d been sound asleep with visions of big Rangeley deer dancing in his head. Thanks to years of training, though, he quickly answered his call to duty and began assessing the situation.

“Whaaat? What noise are you talking about? I can’t tell where it’s….” Flump…flump…flump…kaffitt….ffitt…ffitt…kaflump!

“It’s right there, in the wall, next to your head! You didn’t hear that?”

“Sssshhh! Of course I hear now! Will you be quiet and let me figure out what it is and how it got in there?”

Typically, it takes a minute for Tom to fine-tune his hearing to my ultra-sensitive Mom- ears wavelength, and for me to throttle back the intensity of my verbal inquisition to match his calm style of methodical examination. But once we sync up, we are Team Invincible. Having a long history of shared critter invasions to draw from, we wasted no time zeroing in on our little trespasser(s).

“Bats should have migrated or be hibernating by now,” Tom stated. “It could be a mouse, I suppose but I just can’t imagine how that’s possible. There’s no droppings anywhere. And there’s no way he could have gotten into that wall.” Flump…flump…flump…kaffitt….ffitt…ffitt…kaflump! “Jeez, I hope it’s not a friggin’ flying squirrel! They do live around here, you know.” Standing in his underwear with one ear plastered against the wall, I could sense the intensity of his concentration. Cautiously, I waited for breaks in the scratching and snuffling to offer up suggestions.

“Bats would squeak, remember…like that chirping noise we heard at the old Moosehead camp before we poked a couple dozen out of hiding. But it sure does sound like it has wings. Can you hear that sort of flapping noise? How could it do that without wings? And if it is a mouse, we sure can’t just leave it in there! Remember the time in our other house the mouse died in the wall, or at least it smelled like a mouse died in the wall? We’d have that dead mouse smell right behind our bed for months! Ewwww! And remember the mouse that died on top of the water heater and you didn’t find it till……”Flump…flump…flump…kaffitt….ffitt…ffitt…kaflump!

WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! Attempting to shut me up, to scare the critter back outside, or both, Tom slammed on the bedroom wall so loud that the beagles started barking out in their pen. I crossed my fingers, calmed the nerves that had just levitated me a couple inches off the mattress, and hoped a noise that forceful would send whatever it was scampering away. Wasn’t it just the other day we were congratulating ourselves on being mouse proof—getting all smug about the new cabin being tight as a little drum with just us and the beagles allowed inside? As I drifted off to sleep again, I reminded myself to never get over-confident with Mother Nature. And never argue with your mother-in-law when she insists that, no matter how hard you try, you’re just borrowing living space from the forest animals. “You were right.” I admitted. “Good thing our visitors have left us in peace again, for now….”

Flump…flump…flump…kaffitt….ffitt…ffitt…kaflump!  WHAM! WHAM! WHAM!

Finally we decided to call off our investigation until morning. We screwed ear plugs in so tight our ear canals must have looked like the inside of a rifle barrel, and hunkered under the covers, waiting till we could add daylight and the power of Google to our plan of attack. Thanks to the Internet and a fresh outlook, Tom clarified our options to take back our territory. It was definitely a stirring noise, he figured. Possible sources, in this order, were: 1) a mouse who fell down inside the wall and was trying to leap and scramble his way out; 2) bats with no sense of seasonal timing; or 3) a friggin’ flying squirrel. No matter what rodent—winged or otherwise—needed relocating, his strategy would be the same. Like most home improvements, it would be a do-it-himself project, since rodents are not in my contract. Plus, he didn’t need an expensive exterminator to come out and charge big money for stating the obvious problem and taking care of it with the very same tools he had right in his own workshop.

Ultimately, reclaiming quiet here required a drill, ammonia, hornet spray with a super long nozzle and foaming caulk. Also invaluable was Tom’s deduction to make the inside corner of the bedroom closet the point of attack. Whatever was stirring in the wall is gone, for now, leaving it so quiet we can hear sleet against our windows and the wind blowing all the way down the lake from Upper Dam.

Portraits of Thanksgiving

Joy Clough4 Comments

Back in my teens and early twenties, I thought posing for the family Thanksgiving photo was kind of annoying. Just about the time I’d be digging into my carefully allocated favorite foods—while declining any not-so-favorites still circling past me in the hopes I’d free up some precious plate space—the request would be made. “Look up…over here…and smile everybody!” I’d oblige, mid-mouthful, smiling just enough to not mess up my spearing and shoveling momentum. Even when I became a hostess rather than a guest, I’d pause only for a half-seated pose, saying “cheese” then “Who wants more gravy?” mid-route back to the kitchen.

“What’s the big deal?” I wondered silently. “We all know what we look like. Besides, I already have a shoe box full of these different-year-same-diningroom-table-type shots.” And then, I found the old Polaroid.

Sometime in early motherhood, the little girl things I’d taken for granted became vitally important pieces of a legacy I needed to preserve. And the decades of old Polaroid pictures hiding in the shoe box were treasures worth sharing with my girls. Way down on the bottom, we found one of my first Thanksgivings captured in black and white.

The year was 1958. Nine of us are seated around my Nana’s table: myself, my cousins, my aunt, my uncle, my sister, my mother, and my grandparents. We’re all in various stages of spooning and serving and planning out second helpings when the camera froze us for a happy, hectic instant. I am two-and-a-half, perched on a step stool beside my Nana in a frilly dress I still dimly remember. My mother, seated on my other side, has just turned 30. She’s beaming a wide, relaxed smile while her arm is poised like a safety spring to hold me, her youngest, from toppling over and taking the holiday festivities down with me. Nana, looking over her shoulder with a hasty grin, seems to be saying something like: “Hurry up and take the picture before everything gets cold!” The only evidence of my Dad in the portrait is the burst of his flash bulb in the upper corner of the mirror hanging over the table. Below, three generations of heads turning toward the photographer’s light for a few immortal seconds, are reflected in the mirror, too.

Like all middle-aged moms, I have special Thanksgiving prayers about family and food, love and well-being. Before saying them, though, I think back to that old Polaroid print. It’s in the scanning of the grey setting that my here and now becomes vivid, because all the adults—the grandparents and parents posing at that Thanksgiving table—are now gone. After the flash bulb burst and my Dad sat back down, we all went back to our steaming plates, blissfully unaware that most in our precious gathering would, one by one, be leaving the table way too soon. I imagine my Mum looked up from her holiday feast thinking she was posing for just another snapshot. How could she know she’d already lived two-thirds of her short life?

The photo from 1958 is now archived somewhere in the moving boxes I have yet to unpack. Someday, I’ll take it out of the shoe box and preserve it like it really deserves, stuck for posterity amid the prints of my daughters’ birthdays, holidays, vacations and everything in between. By mid-February, I figure, I’ll be more than ready to take up scrap booking to get myself through my first Rangeley winter. Meanwhile, I’ve got a  slide show playing in my head of the most memorable year of my life. It’s been another year of challenge and loss, of beauty, hope and abundance, of my wildest dreams unfolding before me. This Thanksgiving, as I pause, smile, and really look at my family around the table, I will celebrate being there with them. I will give thanks for my daughters, now grown into beautiful, strong, amazing women who mother me back while keeping me young at heart. I will commemorate this year as one of great balance, of growth and simplification. While my home and lifestyle became comfortably smaller, my world once again includes my sister and my niece. And I’ve gained a new love and understanding for Tom’s brother and sisters, making my extended family closer than ever. I will give thanks for all of them, especially Tom, my husband and forever friend—the center of my beautiful collage. I will sit still for the annual picture, aware that it IS a big deal, being another year older sitting around the same old table.

I will never lose sight of my old Thanksgiving Polaroid. It’s a necessary backdrop for me. In contrast, though, my here and now is too vibrant for me to dwell on portraits of my life gone by. Spirit willing, I picture myself in my 80’s surrounded in living color by my family and friends, focused on the blessings right in front of me.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Be blessed.

(For more on Thanksgiving, see Quirky Turkey.)

Happy half anniversary

Joy Clough2 Comments

When my girls were toddlers, we originated half-birthdays – celebrations marking six months till they turned another year older. Giving us a good excuse to eat cake and act silly in the middle of winter, this tradition stuck into adulthood. “Happy half birthday!” I still shout into the phone, picturing my half-birthday girl treating herself to a cupcake with one festive candle. Posting on Facebook, or planting a candle in a cookie is also acceptable, as long as the sentiment is expressed.

“What’s a half birthday?” one of Helen’s friends wanted to know last January after I acknowledged the occasion on her Facebook wall. “Duh…It means I’m 26-and-a-half years old,” Helen explained, “going on 27!

Tom says my ability to recall dates is a female thing. Whether it’s the specific day back in 1973 he finally asked me out – or when we bought our first car, brought a new beagle home, or traveled to a particular destination – I can rattle off the date like it was yesterday. I can’t say with any certainty who I met or what I read about just yesterday, but ask me to list significant occasions and I’m a savant.

“Hey, I’ve been living in Rangeley for exactly six months today!” I announced recently. “It’s my half anniversary!” We were driving down a dirt road covered with mixed precipitation, which triggered my internal almanac. Half a year had gone by since moving day in May, when I was driving down that same dirt road (covered in mixed precipitation) with the last load crammed into my Subaru!

Why does my date recall click in semi-annually rather than waiting a whole year? And how can I calculate lunar cycles when I can’t even finish a crossword puzzle? Beats me, but I think it has less to do with my gender than it does with my ability to filter my world through the eyes of an overgrown six-year-old. I romanticize the past and dream about tomorrow. Each day I learn something new, I surprise myself. If I’ve been sad and suddenly someone tells a joke, I remember the moment I stopped crying and started laughing again. And, while the kid part of me is doing that, the adult part of me is doing a daily assessment of where I’ve been and how far I still want to go.

It was almost 30 years to the day I’d moved into my house in Rochester that I left it to move to Rangeley. Three decades of birthdays, holidays and weddings I’d celebrated there, mixed in with passings and other sad anniversaries, too. My first house had endured all my momentous occasions and my trivial ones. It sheltered my family, watched us grow. While packing, I thought I’d mourn leaving just a little bit. I thought I’d want to linger in my kitchen near the door frame that tracked each girl’s height from birth through high school with pen carvings in the wood. Instead I felt relieved, ready to start my new life in my favorite home on the lake. As I drove away for the last time, I could almost hear the girls in the back seat, chattering about Indian Cove and s’mores and all the adventures they’d have when we finally got “up to camp.”

I did indulge in a brief period of feeling sorry for myself a couple days after I moved in my last load. I was standing in my new kitchen, watching Tom drive away, and I was as mournful as the beagles to see him leave. His retirement from teaching was still a month away and, weekdays, he had to live with his sister until school was out. Meanwhile, the beagle boys and I had to hold down the fort.

On that lonely afternoon in May, those weeks till Tom could join me for good seemed like forever. But I bucked up, marched away from the window and got busy. I unpacked till the sound of tape being ripped off a box top made me want to cry. When I got tired of stocking cupboards, I blasted WTOS and danced around my kitchen in my PJs. At night when I could finally bring myself to turn the TV and the radio off, I put the wind-up alarm clock from our Moosehead cabin next to my bed, lulling myself to sleep like a puppy. I learned how to bake bread and how to grow flowers. I conquered my childlike cravings for giant gobs of peanut butter and, most days, fed myself dinner salads. I relearned how to like my own company as I watched the lake warm and the lupines bloom. Looking back on it now, that stretch of moving in alone time was a brief blur in the start of my momentous transition year. Before I knew it, Tom had hung up his teacher clothes in favor of jeans and a chamois shirt, and had joined me and the beagles out on the dock to  toast his retirement.

Until a week ago, I’d never determined my own half-birthday, figuring it was a rite reserved for my younger generation. But all the beginnings and endings I’d been through must have given my internal calendar wheel a spin. “Well, let’s see, I had my birthday about a week before Tom got here, so that would mean….”

When I turn 54 and a half this month, I’m psyched for some sort of personal harmonic convergence. Turns out, it happens right around Thanksgiving, right after my six month moving in anniversary, and right before Tom’s. I think I’ll find one of Helen’s candles, stick it into a homemade peanut butter sandwich, and rejoice.

Fashionably late

Joy Clough4 Comments

When it came to fashion, old-time woods hermits had the right idea. Clothes were for covering up, keeping warm, and for pocketing tools and bait. One outfit was sufficient, typically consisting of overalls and various inner and outer seasonal layers. Weather permitting, she would put a lump of soap in the pocket of her overalls, fasten them to a low branch over the water and let the current do her laundry. What she wore during wash day is a mystery, but I’m pretty sure it had a lot to do with why she was a hermit.

I don’t want to be a hermit. I do plan to go into town more than once a year. But I still envy the simplicity of a hermit’s clothing options. If a particular layer wasn’t hanging on the deer antler by her bed, or out in the lake rinse cycle, it was on her back. She didn’t have to dig through a closet full of hangers for just the right shade of slacks or find the Tupperware tote marked “Christmas sweaters” before it was too late. While I’ve never been what you’d call a clothes horse, I still have inventory control problems this time of year. I can’t seem to keep my available wardrobe in pace with the seasons, and end up either freezing or roasting while my timely seasonal stuff stays packed away.

My most fashionable period came and went in the early ’90s. As sole proprietor of my marketing communications business, sometimes I had to match a skirt, blouse and blazer so that I looked like I belonged in a boardroom instead of back home, working in my basement office in my fuzzy pants. Fortunately, I gave those outfits the heave long before moving up to Rangeley. Convinced by my daughters that shoulder pads were not coming back into vogue, and that pleated slacks did not flatter my midsection, I purged at least half of my wardrobe before I began packing. I only held onto a couple of “nice” outfits, just in case I win tickets to Broadway, or Tom surprises me with a big splurge down to Portland, and I want to look presentable. I also tucked away my default “really fancy” dress with the sincere hope I would be dragging it out for more weddings than funerals. Otherwise, I’m now devoid of couture and career wear, reserving closet and dresser space for my Rangeley “business” attire.

Rangeley attire, I’m figuring out, is not nearly as snazzy as L.L. Bean portrays. I don’t own any “casual countryside” pants, or a parka that’s only good for “those occasional summer showers.” And, if I did, they would still be packed under the bed on that one fraction of one day I’d fit the exact scenario described in the catalogue. The business of living here  requires plenty of L.L. Bean, but mostly the plain stuff you see in the “Tried and True” and “Classic Comfort” sections – the stuff no one needs to model because everyone already owns a pair. Being here year-round also requires a new definition of dressing for the seasons. Although “getting ready” for spring, summer, fall and winter is a marketable notion in other climates, seasons can’t be categorized neatly enough to sell any special ensembles up here. We don’t actually have summer, fall, winter and spring. We have summer (for about two weeks in August), almost winter, winter, and not-quite summer yet. Being weather-ready means having a huge row of deer antler hooks with all manner of L.L. Bean basics close at hand. It also makes putting anything under the bed or up in the attic because it’s off-season seem pretty silly.

Good thing I’m already an expert on wearing the “layered look.” Back when I was a warm weather resident, I kept some camp clothes in the old dresser – mostly stuff that should have been left at Goodwill decades ago. I had some stain-splattered dungarees, a couple t-shirts, turtlenecks, the obligatory hooded sweatshirt and my really versatile red camp sweater. If I got overly optimistic about the weather on Memorial Day weekend and didn’t pack any warm clothes, I could just layer my camp duds. If the temperature rose, off they’d come. Factor in menopause, and I acquired incredible agility and speed, peeling off and piling on clothing like Superman turning back and forth into Clark Kent. These days, I’m outfitted for any given excursion with short- and long-sleeved layers and at least one layer of fleece. I top that off with a waterproof parka that looks almost as sporty tied around my waist as it does zipped up to my chin. In my pockets, I’m packing gloves, sunglasses, and a variety of head coverings. When I get caught in those occasional not-quite spring or winter squalls, I’ve discovered that I can tie my hood over my hat even when it’s already over my ear muffs.

I’m still figuring out which fashion essentials are my “must haves” – which combinations protect me from the elements, keep my thermostat adjusted, and won’t draw stares in town. I haven’t bought any overalls yet, even though I could really use the extra pockets. The hardest part in updating my fashion statement has been throwing away my retro red sweater. When I first unearthed it from the bottom of the Hefty bag it was packed away in during our cabin reconstruction year, I couldn’t bring myself to part with it. “I found my camp sweater!” I sighed, as I saw its familiar red silhouette, felt its comforting chenille. Then it disintegrated in my fingers, falling in a heap of soft shreds atop the mouse-eaten blanket it had been layered next to all winter. I had no choice but to make that sweater a piece of my fashion history, comforted by the knowledge that my taste in clothing was shared by a really stylin’ camp mouse.

Self storage ins and outs

Joy Clough2 Comments

It’s not a saying you’re likely to see made into one of those overpriced wooden wall trinkets. But while moving our belongings from the old camp to the new camp, and then from the old house to the new camp-house, Tom and I had a motto that became so ingrained in our psyche, it may as well have been burned onto a pine plank and hung in our entryway.

“Crap goes out. No crap comes back in.”

Three years ago, “out” referred to moving all our Maine stuff to our garage. Since the roof was coming off to build our cabin up two stories, everything had to go or risk being demolished by a Sawzall. Back then, we weren’t experienced movers. In 30 years of marriage, we’d moved our things only twice: once from an attic apartment nicknamed the Hobbit Hole to our first house, and once from a water-access-only camp we’d sold as furnished (minus a moose steak-sized cast iron skillet too well seasoned to leave behind, and a few other must-have items for setting up our next rustic kitchen we’d thrown in a Roughneck dish pan). No biggie, we figured. Carting stuff across the back lawn to the garage in Rangeley would be a logistical breeze compared to lugging it down those Hobbit Hole steps and into the back of our pickup, or ferrying it across the northern end of Moosehead.

So, standing at Point A, my kitchen, looking out the window across the relatively short expanse to Point B, my garage, I felt pretty cocky that Memorial Day of 2007. Not too much packing required, I figured. No moving boxes even necessary. Nope, the only box I’d need was my box of drawstring garbage bags. And why bother labeling them? After all, I was only packing camp stuff and moving it 70 feet for a few months until construction was finished. Come Labor Day, I’d just cart it all back in…..

Not-so-fast forward to February 2008. Camp-house reconstruction is almost done. I’m thrilled with my new kitchen, living room, bedrooms and bathrooms, and am eager to outfit their brand spanking newness with a few household essentials. “At least one lamp. That big old spaghetti pot. Definitely the coffee maker and, if I’m lucky, another flashlight.” I’m rattling off a wish list of items to retrieve as I make my way out to the garage along our Iditarod Trail, so-named by our builder who’s had to shovel his way to work since early December. Turned out, my Labor Day end-date for construction was, as we’d say in engineering support operations, an “aggressive” deadline. Tom and I had made short work of moving all the old camp crap out on that balmy May afternoon, stacking bulging bags atop our old book shelves and cramming all manner of things into dresser drawers. “It’s getting real now,” we declared as we bid farewell to the empty log shoebox of a camp that used to be our summer home. Our part of the project was done, now “presto-chango, full speed ahead,” and we’d back in before snow flies, right?

So…I miscalculated by several months. Meanwhile, snow had definitely flown, drifted, blanketed and flown again while I acclimated myself to what was real and possible when erecting a three-story salt-box out of an old shoebox shell 20 miles from the nearest building supply store. Also unrealistic, I discovered that winter, was thinking stuff could just be moved back in as effortlessly as  it had been moved out. That would have meant I could actually find the coffee pot resting inside an old wastebasket atop the bookshelf, that I could pinpoint whether the flashlight was in my old sock drawer or at the bottom of any given garbage bag. Actual pinpointing of any sort, it turned out, was impossible in the freezing garage. Who knew back in May that drawstring garbage bags don’t reopen for gloved fingers and only expose their contents to mice who find what they’re looking for among the ancient camp towels?

Yup, the Iditarod Trail hampered all but a staggered approach to the garage-to-camp return trip. And, actually, abiding by our “no crap comes back in” motto had to be a staged effort as well. We did immediately rid ourselves of the really ancient junk – things like plastic juice tumblers that probably came free in boxes of laundry detergent back in the 50’s, a sugar bowl I think my mother got with S & H Green stamps, and assorted nicky-nacks we’d accumulated from well-meaning relatives who figured our camp was one step better than Salvation Army. In all practicality, though, since selling our Rochester house was still a ways off, we had to hang onto the old spaghetti pot and the lamps and such that had already lived a hard life before being deemed good enough for camp. Until we could move to Rangeley permanently, our motto had to be revised to “some crap comes back in, but goes back out as soon as its newer or better replacement arrives.”

I think we’ve succeeded. Six months since our big migration up the mountain for good, we are packing and moving experts. We rented a storage pod and tracked its contents with first-in-last-out precision. We bubble wrapped and boxed and carefully labeled. We merged and purged until there’s only traces of semi-serviceable camp junk mingled in with our new stuff. We’re all unpacked now, except for a few miscellaneous boxes tucked away on the third floor we’re ignoring till the dead of winter. Like the one labeled “Hall closet crap.” That one’s gotta go back out to the garage.

Lasting memories

Joy Clough4 Comments

“What if it was the last time you’d ever see the lake and your camp, would you want to know?”

Our neighbor and longtime friend, Ed, used to pose this question annually. It would be “closing up” time, and we’d be sitting around a stick fire, toasting the end of another great summer season with one or more adult beverages. His favorite movie, “On Golden Pond,” made him raise this question each time he watched it, which he did every winter when he began to get homesick for his place in Rangeley. He always came to the conclusion that, no, he wouldn’t want to know, and Tom and I would agree. Even if we got as old as Norman Thayer in the movie and, heaven forbid, fell ill right on our front porches, we would still want to think there would be one more summer on the lake.

Ed died suddenly one May, just as he was getting ready for his first trip back up here for the season. In his late fifties, active, and in seemingly good health, I don’t imagine he knew as he stood on his dock the previous October that he’d never make it back. Not consciously, anyway.

In years past, come Columbus Day, I’d look down the lake one last time and remember Ed. The Subaru would be packed with canned goods, dogs and dirty laundry to take “home,” and I’d walk as slowly as possible back up the path to start my trip down the mountain until May. I’d say a final goodbye out loud to my camp like it lived and breathed, already looking forward to the day, seven months later, when I’d fling the door open and yell: “I’m baaack!”

Things are different this year now that I’m a full-timer. I won’t have that going away feeling, wondering how my cabin will make it through without me, and I without it. I won’t get that silly conflicted sensation when I speak of “home” and know that, half of the year, my soul is rooted somewhere other than where my physical body must reside. Still, with the leaves turned and the summer folks gone, I find myself thinking back to Ed, to cycles, to seasons come and gone, to wondering: Is this the last day I’ll go outside without a jacket? Is this the last morning my mums will still be yellow when I wake up?

It’s a natural turning, I remind myself, to be reflective and a tad melancholy. As my landmark first-time year of permanency stretches past summer, it’s OK to look back on all my last-time journeys, too. And, I believe, it’s healthy and healing to not forget Ed’s big question. Not to deliberate and brood, mind you, but simply to honor it and not let it float out of my stream of consciousness.

In this season of closing up, of settling in and hunkering down, I’m allowing myself to ponder beginnings and endings. Like many people, I have a legacy of lasts, of losing loved ones, my livelihood, and sometimes even my sense of humor. I have spent repeated “last” Christmases and birthdays with terminally sick relatives, while missing just as many last celebrations with others taken in the wink of an eye. Would knowing – somehow being able to determine exactly – my last times with them changed how I spent those precious final moments? No. My answer, I’m thankful to say, is no. I would have laughed, cried, hugged and loved just the same.

But what has changed through these experiences is my certainty that, as the universe  moves in mysterious ways on its eternal timetable, I am left with choices. I can ebb and flow with it, or try to resist. I can assume “life sucks and then you die” or I can declare each new day a possibility. My choice – bolstered, I think, by my choice of lifestyle and surroundings – is to run headlong into life like an overgrown 8-year-old. My answer is to learn from my beagles, who don’t go on first and last walks, but barrel through the woods whenever and wherever we take them like it is the only time they are running free, the only time the ground smells so sweet.

Figure every time might be the last, that’s my strategy. And it’s a strategy that’s working wonders for grabbing the gusto out of everything from food to friendships, from adventures to everyday encounters. Take snorkeling, for example. I loved it so much when I first tried it in Cancun, I cried. “I finally found a water sport I love to do for hours, and it’s in the Caribbean ocean! This is the last time I’ll ever get to go!” That was 18 years, and 15 trips to seven different islands ago, and I still hover, transfixed for hours, figuring each colorful fish is the last one I’ll ever see.

When Big Mike, another longtime friend, came up to visit recently, we had a hard  time remembering the last time we saw him. It was sometime, we guessed, before we got grey hair and eating healthy became a worthy topic of conversation. No matter, though, we just took up right where we left off in college. Tom took him fishing for the last days of the season at Upper Dam. We told the same old jokes and laughed like we’d never heard them before. And the lobster we brought back to the cabin after showing off the peak foliage was the best any of us had ever had.

Coloring my world

Joy CloughLeave a comment

The editors from Country Living haven’t called yet, but when they come to do a feature on my interior decorating style, I’ll bet they describe it as “L.L. Carib-Bean.”

The new touches I’ve added to my 20-plus year-old dwelling have not, I don’t think, placed it outside the quaint little cabin category. It’s definitely not one of those places you’d drive by and wonder “Don’t they know they’re in the Maine woods for crying out loud?” But while it may not qualify as froufrou, my decor is by no means a standard fishing and hunting “it gets us out of the rain” type place either.  As the pros would say, I “brought the outside in” with natural earth tones, lots of pine paneling, birch floors and dark cherry cabinets. I added a tile hearth in the same vivid blue that, on a good day, matches my view of Bald Mountain and Saddleback. And, of course, I threw in plenty of prerequisite forest (a.k.a. Rangeley green) accents. Then I kicked it all up a notch with splashes of color not often naturally occurring in the environment, at least not at this latitude. The end result makes a unique statement about my remodeling influences, including:

  • I’m making up for the fact that, in my formative decorating years, I defaulted to brown. Thirty years ago, when I moved into my first and only completely brand new house, I had little decorating experience and even less furniture. I did, however, have a tan Naugahyde couch and chair set and a couple beige lampshades. So I put in brown and rust-toned carpet that would “go with everything” I hoped I would later have, while “not showing any dirt” from the  outdoor dog I had and the kids I eventually would admit I hoped to have. My kitchen and bathrooms featured harvest gold, avocado, copper and all those other stuck in the ’70s shades. Behind closed doors in my bedroom, I even had a bright red carpet. But my living room stayed brown and blah for at least a decade.
  • Tom and I agreed we wouldn’t just go with the typical moose and loon motif when making renovations. We do love moose and loons, of course, and still are left with almost as many inside as we see outside. We just strived to be a bit different. So, instead, we came up with wild flower bathrooms. To contrast the knotty pine paneling throughout the rest of the house, we had the two bathrooms and the kitchen sheet-rocked so they could be painted. Buttercup yellow was my choice downstairs, accessorized with Black-Eyed Susan print curtains and (coming soon) wild flower art. For the upstairs bath, I chose the palest pink to compliment my purple, pink and white lupine shower curtain, my hummingbird and lupine stained glass in the window, and one of my favorite pieces of artwork: A moose standing in a field of lupines! (He’s your typical Maine moose picture, but just a bit different, hanging there in his pink and purple habitat.)
  • My color scheme was dictated primarily by stained glass. As I showed you in Come and Meet Those Dancin’ Feet (Part Two), my favorite keepsake and interior focal point in my previous house was a piece of stained glass – a particularly vivid piece featuring green grass, cobalt lake water and three bright red roses. I’m sure in reality my decision-making timeline spanned several months, but here’s how I remember it: 1) Tom told me I had a window of opportunity to decide on colors for paint, countertops, etc., for the Rangeley reconstruction. 2) I didn’t take him seriously enough quickly enough because: a) I had been living in the same quarters for so long that picking stuff out meant a quick trip to the Home Depot for either damage control or camouflage, and b) having a virtually clean redecorating slate was too good to be true and, in a twisted way, scared me into inactivity. 3) I was sitting in my Rochester kitchen, drinking coffee, gazing at my stained glass in bewilderment, wondering how the heck I was going to not screw up my one big chance to showcase my treasures in a new home, when my “window of opportunity” suddenly solidified right in front of me. I knew I would hang the stained glass in my new Rangeley kitchen. It would be a focal point forevermore, shedding light and color throughout my first floor, contrasting beautifully with my dark woodwork, matching my mountain-blue hearth and my grandmother’s blue Danish plates I’d hang on the beams! And the green glass of the grass would make a perfect paint color!
  • I matched the color of my kitchen walls to green stained glass (see previous bullet) on a really sunny day. With my new focal point in mind, I immediately marched off to Home Depot and made color choices in record time. (A true believer in supporting the Rangeley economy rather than a big box store, I wasn’t going to buy paint, countertops or Congoleum there. My mission was to match up swatches to bring to the Rangeley Building Supply for them to make the order.) What I described as New Leaf for my green kitchen color, the paint manufacturer actually called Swamp Splash. While this lively spring green did match perfectly with my stained glass still hanging in Rochester, it initially alarmed our building contractor with its incandescence. Adding in appliances and dark cabinets toned it down considerably and, to my knowledge, hasn’t scared anybody since. The end result is a Key West sort of ambiance in the western  mountains of Maine. 
  • I have a serious passion for red. Red cars, red-headed men, red carpeting (see first bullet). Fortunately, when devising my scheme of rustic jewel tones, I tempered my passion and incorporated red as an accent color only. I have a bit in my area rug, a few pieces of my mother’s ruby glass displayed here and there. Tastefully toned down, I’d say, and not what people expected I’d come up with given free rein. Those who knew my passion for red and pictured me remastering Belle Watling’s front parlor on the shore of the Big Lake seem relieved.
  • My other favorite place in the whole world is a tropical beach. I hope my readers aren’t dismayed when I admit that, even surrounded by Rangeley’s four-season splendor, I still often dream of turquoise waters and beaches lined with palm trees and hibiscus. In terms of decorating direction, this polarity has left me somewhere near the intersection of Rangeley Plantation and Coconut Grove.

Whatever collection of quirks has influenced my unique style, I’m glad all those decorating decisions are behind me, literally. The color wheel has stopped spinning, the paint palate is dry and I am most pleased with how I made my window of opportunity shine. I am especially glad this time of year, when I look past my hearth and my ruby window ornaments to the reds, greens and golds of fall in Rangeley. Country Living will call it “Kaleidoscopic!” That is, if they hurry up and come out here while the leaves are still on my trees.